Comment by smoldesu

> because it also makes clear that IRC is not an ideal medium for many forms of messaging.

Back in the day where people used to differentiate between IRC and IMs (more importantly, chat vs messaging), I don't really think this is correct. In today's era of Discord/Slack/SMS though, it certainly would seem like a detriment. I do agree with those other people, though. What was nice about IRC (to me) was how imperative it was. You could post a cool thing, question or discussion topic in a channel and have responses coming through within the minute. When you're done, you just close the window and it's like it was never there. I remember feeling like I was using a secret spy communicator when I had IRC downloaded in middle school, the whole ephemeral nature of it was the coolest to me back then.